In 1729 Curll was again pilloried—this time by Pope in the Dunciad, in connection with Tonson and Lintot:
“With authors, stationers obey’d the call
(The field of glory is a field for all);
Glory and gain th’ industrious tribe provoke,
And gentle Dulness ever loves a joke;
A poet’s form she placed before their eyes,
And bade the nimblest racer seize the prize.
* * * * *
——Lofty Lintot in the circle rose:
‘The Prize is mine, who ‘tempts it are my foes;
With me began this genius, and shall end.’
He spoke, and who with Lintot shall contend?
“Fear held them mute. Alone untaught to fear,
Stood dauntless Curll: ‘Behold that rival here!
The race by vigour, not by vaunts, is won:
So take the hindmost, hell,’ he said, ‘and run.’
Swift as a bard the bailiff leaves behind
He left huge Lintot, and outstript the wind.
As when a dab-chick waddles through the copse
On feet and wings, and flies, and wades, and hops,
So labouring on with shoulders, hands, and head,
Wide as a windmill all his figure spread,
With arms expanded Bernard views his state,
And left-legged Jacob seems to emulate.”
And finally Curll stumbles into an unsavoury pool:—
“Obscene with filth the miscreant lies bewrayed,
Fallen in the plash his wickedness had laid;
Then first (if poets aught of truth declare)
The caitiff vaticide conceived a prayer.”
In reference to Curll there is a note to this passage, “He carried the trade many lengths beyond what it ever before had arrived at; he was the envy and admiration of all his profession. He possessed himself of a command over all authors whatever; he caused them to write what he pleased; they could not call their very names their own. He was not only famous among them; he was taken notice of by the state, the church, and the law, and received particular marks of distinction from each.”
We have no space to discuss the vexed question as to how the letters of Pope published by Curll came into his hands—the discussion would occupy a volume and remain a moot question after all. But we are disposed to believe with Johnson and Disraeli that “being inclined to print his own letters, and not knowing how to do so without the imputation of vanity, what in this country has been done very rarely, he contrives an appearance of compulsion; that when he could complain that his letters were surreptitiously published, he might decently and defensively publish them himself.” The letters at all events were genuine, and Pope in a feigned or real indignation caused Curll to be brought for a third time (the second had been for publishing the Duke of Buckingham’s words) before the bar of the House of Lords for disobeying its standard rules; but on examination the book was not found to contain any letters from a peer, and Curll was dismissed, and boldly continued the publication till five volumes had been issued.
In spite, or perhaps on account of the unblushing effrontery with which he run amuck at everything and everybody, Curll was a successful man, as his repeated removals to better and better premises plainly testifies. Over his best shop in Covent Garden he erected the Bible as a sign. He has had many apologists, among others worthy John Nichols, as deserving commendation for his industry in preserving our national remains, but the scavenger, when he gathers his daily filth, lays little claim to doing a meritorious action, he only works unpleasantly for his daily bread; and it has been the repeated cry of publishers, even in our own times, in reproducing an immoral book, that they were wishing only for the preservation of something rare and curious. It were not well that any book once written should ever die,—that any one link in the vast chain of human thought should ever be irrecoverably lost, but the publisher of such a book must, at least, bear the same penalty of stigma as the author, for he has not even the author’s self-vanity as an excuse, but only the still more wretched plea of mercenary motive. We will conclude our notice of Curll by an extract from “John Buncle,” by Thomas Amory, who knew him personally and well. “Curll was in person very tall and thin—an ungainly, awkward, white-faced man. His eyes were a light gray—large, projecting, goggle, and purblind. He was splay-footed and baker-kneed.... He was a debauchee to the last degree, and so injurious to society, that by filling his translations with wretched notes, forged letters, and bad pictures, he raised the price of a four-shilling book to ten. Thus, in particular, he managed Burnet’s ‘Archæology.’ And when I told him he was very culpable in this and other articles he sold, his answer was, ‘What would I have him do? He was a bookseller;—his translators, in pay, lay three in a bed at the Pewter Platter Inn, in Holborn, and he and they were for ever at work deceiving the public.’ He, likewise, printed the lewdest things. He lost his ears for the ‘Nun in her Smock’ and another thing. As to drink, he was too fond of money to spend any in making himself happy that way; but, at another’s expense, he would drink every day till he was quite blind and as incapable of self-motion as a block. This was Edmund Curll. But he died at last as great a penitent, I think, in the year 1748 (it was 1747), as ever expired. I mention this to his honour.”[7]